Police try to unravel events that led to Wal-Mart clerk's death

TYLER (AP)  Shoppers placed more flower bouquets and teddy bears Saturday on a table inside a Wal-Mart store where a 19-year-old employee was abducted earlier this week and later found dead.

Police, meanwhile, continued trying to piece together what happened between Megan Leann Holden's abduction captured on surveillance videotape just before midnight Wednesday and the discovery of her body Friday morning in a ditch near Stanton, about 380 miles west of Tyler.

Authorities performed an autopsy on Holden's body Saturday, but would not release details until next week, said Greg Parrott, an investigator with the Lubbock County Medical Examiner's Office.

Police said that Holden, who was shot to death, was killed at the hands of a man who went on a multistate crime spree before he turned up Friday at an Arizona hospital with a gunshot wound.

The suspect, Johnny Lee Williams, 24, remained jailed in Arizona on a $1 million bond on an aggravated kidnapping charge from Texas, authorities said.

Williams has requested an attorney and is not talking to authorities, Don Martin, a Tyler police spokesman, said Saturday.

Williams is expected to have an extradition hearing in Arizona early this week, said Carol Capas, Cochise County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman. If he agrees to return to Texas, he could leave in about two weeks.

Wal-Mart declined to discuss its security measures or how it monitors its security tapes, company spokeswoman Andrea Rader said Saturday.

"You hate that it happened," said resident Anthony Johnson. "I hate that for the family," adding that he was now more concerned about his wife going to the store alone at night.

"I'm telling her to be more careful."

At the Tyler Wal-Mart on Saturday, shoppers paused to look at the dozens of flower arrangements and to add to the collection.

Wal-Mart declined to discuss its security measures or how it monitors its security tapes, company spokeswoman Andrea Rader said Saturday.

The surveillance tape shows a man police identified as Williams standing outside the Wal-Mart doors for about two hours before Holden was abducted.

Tapes show Williams walking into the store a couple of times and then standing outside smoking, chatting at times with some customers, police said.

Williams followed two women at different times, but as other people approached, walked back to the entrance before following Holden to her pickup truck in a parking lot beside the store, police said.

"I think he was just looking for an opportunity to get a vehicle and I don't know if a woman was part of that or not," Martin said.

Authorities said that after the abduction, Williams began heading west, robbing a convenience store in the West Texas town of Odessa Thursday before attempting a robbery at an Arizona RV park early Friday morning. A store worker at the RV park fired the shot that sent Williams to the hospital where he was taken into custody.

Because Holden was kidnapped in Tyler, Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham said he would seek capital murder charges.

Police said Williams, who was discharged last year after four years as a Marine and serving in Iraq, was arrested last month in Tyler on a cocaine possession charge. He was released the same day on $2,000 bond.

Williams' parents in Tyler declined to comment Saturday.

The suspect's aunt, Linda Williams, told the Tyler Morning Telegraph that her nephew seemed angrier and not as talkative since he returned from Iraq.

"All you can do is sit here and wonder, you know, what happened," she told the newspaper. "I guess he just snapped. I don't know. He's been asking for help ever since he came home from the military."